Noble Corp. Execs Settle with SEC, Receive No Penalty

Wall Street Journal

Update

A current and a former executive at oil drilling contractor Noble Corp. settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission, receiving no penalties in a civil foreign bribery case days before it was set to go to trial.

Former chief executive Mark A. Jackson and James J. Ruehlen, the current director of Noble’s subsidiary in Nigeria, were charged in 2012 with bribing Nigerian customs officials between 2003 and 2007 to process false paperwork to show the export and re-import of oil rigs when they had never moved. They had been sued under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars the use of bribes to foreign officials to get or keep business.

Jury selection in the case was scheduled for July 9.

The SEC, however, was limited in its options for pursuing penalties over the alleged misconduct in the case against against Messrs. Jackson and Ruehlen because of a Supreme Court case decided in 2013, after the charges were filed, that held the agency faced a five-year statute of limitations from the time it occurred, not from the time it was discovered, when seeking civil penalties in fraud cases.

According to court documents, Mr. Jackson consented to an injunction for being a “control person” for Noble’s books and records violations, and Mr. Ruehlen consented to an injunction for aiding and abetting books and records violations. Neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing under the terms of the settlement documents, nor were they penalized in the case.

Lawyers for Messrs. Jackson and Ruehlen didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Update: “We are very pleased with yesterday’s settlement,” said F. Joseph Warin, a lawyer for Mr. Ruehlen. “While we were looking forward to presenting our case to a jury, the settlement of one record-keeping claim — without any admission of liability or wrongdoing, monetary penalty or restriction on Mr. Ruehlen’s employment — satisfactorily ends the matter and allows Jim to focus his energies on his work for Noble.” Meanwhile, Mr. Jackson’s lawyer, David Krakoff, said in a statement that his client “can now move forward with his life and career.”

Noble was one of the oil-services companies ensnared in an industry-wide foreign-bribery probe linked to Swiss logistics company Panalpina Group. It entered into a settlement with the Justice Department in 2010, agreeing to pay a $2.6 million fine, and $5.6 million in disgorged profits and interest to settle an SEC investigation, without admitting or denying wrongdoing. The company also agreed in January 2011 to pay $2.5 million to Nigerian authorities to settle a piggy-back investigation. A third man in the case, Thomas O’Rourke, settled the civil charges in 2012 and agreed to pay a $35,000 penalty.

Write to Samuel Rubenfeld at Samuel.Rubenfeld@wsj.com. Follow him on Twitter at @srubenfeld.

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